One of the best new shows to air in 2005, The Closer returns for a second season and proves that it has staying power.  The cases this season are just as engrossing, funny, and tragic as the premier season's episodes.  In addition to the great stories, the characters are further developed, some light gets shined on Brenda's past and Mama comes to visit.  If you enjoyed the first season, you should run out and buy this one too.

Brenda Johnson (Kyra Sedgwick) has been brought to LA from Atlanta by L.A. by Assistant Police Chief Will Pope (J.K. Simmons) to lead up a new special murder investigation task force.  In the TV world as in real life, the LAPD has taken it on the chin by blowing some high profile murder cases, and the bad publicity has lead to the creation of this new unit.  They wanted an outsider to be at the head, and Pope has selected Johnson because of her uncanny ability to 'close' a case; obtaining confessions that nearly ensure a conviction.

The problem is that everyone she under her resents her because she's a female and an outsider.  Her abrasive personality, she's more concerned with solving a crime than being nice, doesn't help the situation and neither does the fact that she's very good at her job.  This last bit really galls Capt. Taylor (Robert Gossett), head of robbery and homicide.  He set up the unit Johnson is now heading under the assumption that he would be leading it, and to add insult to injury, she out ranks him.

One of the strongest parts of the first season was that there was an overall story arc that connected the shows.  In the first year Brenda had to win over of her squad, a group of officers who did not want to be reassigned and didn't want to be subordinate to a bitchy woman.  Her intellect and strong personality slowly win the men and women under her over to her side.

Unfortunately Brenda does not suffer fools gladly, and that means that there are many other divisions in the LAPD that she manages to alienate.  In this second season she comes to realize that it would be helpful to mend some bridges and takes some small steps towards doing that.  She also shows the members of her squad that she's loyal to them also.

This last aspect comes into play in one of the season's best episodes, To Protect and Serve.  Detectives Provenza (G. W. Bailey, M*A*S*H) and Flynn (Anthony Denison) have a pair of sky box seats to a baseball game.  When Flynn's car starts acting up they decide to take Provenza's.  They open his garage to discover a dead body.  Now, they could call it in an spend the next several hours answering questions and investigating, or they could go to the game and report the crime afterwards.  As Provenza notes, the woman will still be dead when they get back, so they head off to the game.  When they return however, the body is gone.  It has turned up on the other side of town, naked, and mutilated, with homicide knee deep in the investigation.  With their careers on the line, Provenza and Flynn take over the scene in Deputy Chief Johnson's name, and things start to go downhill from there.

This was a great episode, mainly because Priority Homicide had to solve it before the Homicide and Robbery division did and without them knowing about it.  When Chief Pope calls Brenda in and asks why she had two of her detectives take over an investigation, something she has absolutely no knowledge of, she quickly realizes that they must have had a good reason and covers for them.  The way she wiggles out of Popes inquiries is comic and realistic.
More humorous moments arise when Brenda's "Mama" arrives from out of town.  This just happens to coincide with her hunky-yet-sensitive FBI agent boyfriend (played Jon Tenny) is set to move in with her, something she hadn't gotten around to mentioning to her mother yet.  These episodes were fun, and they not only were able to show how Brenda acts around her family, but they also illustrated where Brenda gets her brains.

The end of the season was a bit different from what had come previously.  It actually starts with the 13th episode, Overkill.  An FBI informant is going to testify at a Mafia bosses trial, when his wife and an agent guarding them are ambushed and murdered.  Priority Homicide takes the informant into protective custody and starts to investigate over the objections of the FBI (something that would NEVER happen in reality.  The FBI would assuredly take over, but that's easy enough to overlook.)  The case takes some unexpected and tragic turns and the episode ends in a shocker.  The program then took a three month absence from the airwaves.

When it came back, the two-hour season finale aired.  This show revealed a good bit about Brenda's past and had her investigating a murder under less than optimal conditions.  (To say more would give away some significant events.)  While these ending episodes played up Brenda's sharp intellect and fierce determination to get the job done, they had a different feel from the other shows.  These episodes also left out scenes of Brenda interrogating suspect and making them confess, which had always been a high point in the show.  Don't get me wrong, these were great episodes, but they move the show in a different direction and I hope that it doesn't continue going down that road next season.

The acting in this show is superb across the board.   Kyra Sedgwick has won an armful of awards for her portrayal of Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson, and she deserves all of them.  As I said of her performance in the first season, she manages to walk that fine line of being hard and professional yet feminine and vulnerable also.  It's a meaty part, with her character having to come across as very competent yet also worried about the problems in her professional life and she's more than up to the task.  Not always relying on dialog, Sedwick makes Brenda Johnson live through her actions such as the way she eats Hostess Ding Dongs and the near sybaritic pleasure she get from consuming them.

Jon Tenny has a bigger part this year, and he is the personification of the world's best boyfriend.  Supporting Brenda and understanding her idiosyncrasies while always being there for her, he's also rugged, strong, and terribly good looking.  He's the type of guy who could steal Lois Lane away from Superman and turn her into a desperate housewife.  (If you don't understand that last line, don't worry, it was really lame joke.)

The fourteen episodes that comprise the second season of The Closer are presented on four DVDs.  These come in a pair of thinpak cases which are housed in a slipcase.  A very nice compact set, slightly thicker than a single standard DVD case.

Audio:

This series comes with a DD 5.1 English soundtrack, which fits the show well.  The dialog is clear and the range is adequate.  There is some use of the soundstage, but since this is a dialog based show much of the audio is firmly centered on the screen thought he surrounds are employed at times.  The only subtitles available are French and Spanish.  Inexplicably there are no English subtitles.

Video:

This show comes with a nice 1.78:1 widescreen picture, and unlike the last season's DVD set, this one is anamorphically enhanced.  The image looked very good.  The colors were strong, the image was sharp and the detail was fine.  The show was a tad dark in some places, and there is some grain but that is undoubtedly the way the creators intended it.  On the digital side, there was a bit of aliasing present in the background, but this was minor.

Extras:

This season also includes more bonus items than the previous year's set which I was grateful to see.  Unfortunately there still aren't any commentary tracks, but there are deleted scenes to eight episodes, a two-minute gag reel that's worth watching.  The same can't be said of the 24-minute featurette, Breaking Down the Closer.  This is you're typical fluff behind-the-scenes piece where the cast and crew talk about the show, their characters, the stories, and how great it is to work with each other.

Final Thoughts:

Once again this season hits a high mark.  It is an excellent show with well thought out scripts, interesting stories, developed characters, and some very funny moments.  The ensemble cast is stellar and the cases they investigate are engrossing.  If you saw the first season and enjoyed it, run out and purchase this one too.  Highly Recommended.